First fruits!

I can see why people have gardens. We bought a tomato plant about a month ago and one tomato ripened just a few weeks later. (The plant already had green tomatoes on it.) This week, between the rain we've had and now the heat, several more have begun to ripen. What a wonderful subject for my WC pencils class!

I loved the fact that each tomato was a different color. And now I know a bit more about the plant. For instance, the stem that goes to each tomato actually bends; it's not just a curve. I should have omitted the teeny green tomato in the center as I couldn't get it to pop out sufficiently. Still, this may provide me with more details for a real painting later on.

Pine cone

This pine cone was a found object from one of my recent walks. I decided to do a detailed observation of it for my WC pencils class. As I examined it closely, I realized that the dark parts of it formed a nice pattern, a real spiral. I also thought it would be good to do a step-by-step drawing of it.

Here's the pine cone, pretty ordinary looking, with the finished one beside it:










I sketched it and then lightly shaded in the darks, trying to emphasize their spiral pattern:

Next was to paint the darks:

I tried to get initial details in:

It was clear that I'd never really looked at a pine cone before. (!) As I paid attention to it, I observed that it must have opened out like a flower as it was growing, and that there were two distinct parts to each "petal". Rather than try to paint these further details immediately, I thought it would be better to work out what I needed to do to paint the petal. This observational shot shows how I approached it, first going way too dark and then finally LOOKING at it:

And finally it was time to lightly sketch in a shadow:

I hope you found this helpful!

Different Strokes

The year has been busier than I expected, so... no posts for 3 months. What a pity. I really haven't had the time to sketch or paint, though I have taken some photos. Still, it's better to post even if it's a bit late...

I love to buy art supplies. Who doesn't? Well, on a recent trip to Evanston, IL, I stopped in at the local Dick Blick store. Several (can't say) dollars later, I walked out with cute magnets, page markers, watercolor paper, new WC paints (including some brands I hadn't tried before like Fragonard and Van Gogh) and some Inktense WC pencils. Aaaargh! What will I do with all of these??

I'd bought WC pencils in the past, but had heard such good things about Inktense that I couldn't resist, so I bought a few (=12, okay?) that I carefully chose from the WONDERFUL selection that Blick had.

I thought it would be helpful to compare the Inktense with other WC media, so I set up a still life, marked my paper off into 4 sections, and began! What did I use? Top right, Inktense; top left, Faber-Castell WC pencils; bottom left, Sargent WC crayons; bottom right, WC tube paints. (And that's the order in which I painted them.) At first I didn't see any real difference between the Inktense and the other WC pencils, but I can see now that the Inktense pencils are much richer and deeper. I'm not so keen on the WC crayons and will probably not use them that often. I might need to work further with the regular WC crayons as well. Never having used Inktense before, I didn't know how hard to press... so perhaps the darkness is due to my having used a LOT of pencil!

Now I know that I need to buy a book on using WC pencils. I washed each object with a brush but I'm sure that there are techniques where you let the pencil marks show. I'll get there. I quite like the pencils and might use them when I'm out and about tomorrow for SketchCrawl. Wish me luck.

Did I mention that I also bought 2 new brushes? Yup, #10 and #12 Robert Simmons White Sable brushes. They are great... wonderful point, and they carry an incredible amount of water. I highly recommend them.